Humboldt Internet Loses To DSL

It's with a heavy heart, although with some anticipation, that I finally broke down and subscribed to DSL service. This means, eventually, I'll be closing my account with Humboldt Internet. It would be silly to pay for two different accounts, especially when I'm not really using one of them.

I'm almost tempted to, though, because there's a lot to be said about the good ol' local dial ups like Humboldt Internet: Simple, great service and inexpensive. With local dial ups you can sign up and log on immediately rather than waiting for a week for the installation package and all that you need with DSL. That, and being able to call in a talk to a service representative rather than getting those damned automated menus you have to find your way through should you have a problem as is the case with DSL operators.

I wanted to be one of the last hold outs for dial up service because once the dial ups go out of business, I suspect service will deteriorate with broadband. No low price competition to deal with anymore with the dial ups gone. Hopefully I'm wrong.

I finally broke down and switched cause I felt the writing was on the wall for 56k. Web sites are getting larger and slower to download every day, or so it seems. I suspect that's because the people who do the web sites all have broadband and don't take file size into consideration when creating web pages. Regardless, I get the feeling that, within a few years, 56k will be all but useless except for e-mail unless one wants to spend five minutes waiting for a page to load.

A couple things I spend a lot of time on, Aces High and my sweepstakes entries, either require constant downloads or have increasingly slow to load web pages. It was just getting a bit impractical to use 56k for those purposes. So, I took someone's advice and signed up for Yahoo DSL for $19.95 a month.

I hope all of you don't follow the dark side, as I have, and abandon your trusty local dial ups. I think with time, though, it's inevitable. Hang in there as long as you can.